Manufacturers Orange County

The air in the neighborhood around Blue Gum Street and Miraloma Avenue is a fragrant stew. The tang of paints and resins blends with the odors of machine oil, rubber, plastic, fresh cut wood and hot metal to create a husky perfume that lets you know a large manufacturing complex is just around the corner. It is a perfume that some have suggested is fast dissipating in Orange County--blown away by increasing urbanization, a fragile economy and restrictive regulation. Aaron Bann would disagree.

If the riots and their aftermath have proved anything, it is that the old system of minority advocacy and Establishment accommodation no longer provides solutions to our most critical economic and social problems. Rather than emphasize competing ethnic differences, Los Angeles needs a politics that builds on the highly diverse nature of the region's ethnic mosaic.

Orange County Supervisor Don R. Roth reported spending nearly $2,900 in campaign funds to pay air fare for a 1990 rail technology tour of Europe, even though his travel for that same trip had already been paid for by a high-speed rail commission on which he served, according to public records.

Pete Planchock, general manager of GM Fanuc Robotics West, hopes faded blue jeans won't go out of style. That's because Planchock's Tustin company, a subsidiary of one of the world's biggest manufacturers of industrial robots, has developed a customized robot that can spray abrasive chemicals on factory-fresh blue jeans to give them that fashionable well-worn look. If the fashion stays hot, GM Fanuc Robotics Corp. hopes it will sell lots of robots to the garment industry, Planchock said.

Building a 36-acre auto mall in the midst of a four-year slump in car sales might seem like financial suicide, but the developer of this planned community is undaunted and Orange County auto dealers say such a South County mall could be a winner. Auto malls--the car industry's version of regional shopping centers--generally are conceded to be the future of new car marketing. But the key to this mall's success is timing.

When he opened his sewing shop two years ago, the Fountain Valley employer said, seasonal slumps, transient laborers and existing government regulations were difficult enough for a small businessman to endure. But that was before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 was passed, and back then he didn't know what bad could be. In 1985, he employed 30 seamstresses to piece together sportswear.

Its housing prices are out of sight and its freeways sometimes impassable, but business executives say Orange County is still one of the best places in the nation to be. The county's economy consistently outperforms the country's, they say, unemployment is almost non-existent, the populace is well-to-do and willing to spend, and the area is ideal for companies hoping to benefit from burgeoning Pacific Rim trade.

Like many manufacturers nationwide, traditional labor-intensive manufacturers in Orange County are having a tougher time keeping costs down and competing with businesses outside the region, especially those in offshore countries. In the coming year, with weaker defense spending and a possible national recession, manufacturers will have to work harder than ever to keep jobs in the county.